Your missing my point. IF <-- key word here -- Canon can reduce their ISO 100 read noise to the minimums recently seen in their cameras (1.5e- worth in the 1D IV sensor), they then could achieve an improvement in total DR at ISO 100. Sony Exmor effectively normalized read noise across all ISO settings. DXO's measurements seem a little sloppy...I've seen measurements from other reviewers that have much more consistent results, so my guess is that the D800 has a consistent 2.7e- read noise at all ISO settings (effectively the minimum read noise at all ISO settings.) IF Canon CAN DO THE SAME THING....make their minimum read noise from the highest ISO the read noise for all ISO's, like Sony did with Exmor, then Canon would have lower read noise than a D800. If that hypothetical (another key word there...my previous post was hypothesizing...might do you good to learn the difference between a hypothetical argument, which is all we can really do when speculating about future improvements Canon might add to their sensors)...if that hypothetical improvement was made, Canon could improve DR in a future 7D by 2.7 stops.

As for your presumption that Canon is incapable of developing a new fab or producing complex sensors at 180nm, there is nothing to stop Canon from innovating. Thats what competition does in a free market...it spurs innovation. Right now all we have about Canon's next cameras is rumor and speculation, but usually those rumors contain nuggets of factual, if not 100% accurate, insight. Based on the current rumors, I speculate that Canon IS innovating, and developing ways to improve their sensor technology beyond the current limitations it experiences today. That does not necessarily require a reduction in transistor size to accomplish. For that matter, does Sony even have a significant lead in transistor size over Canon? I know they use copper wiring in many of their latest CMOS sensor designs which saves them some space, but I hadn't heard that they generally had significant transistor size savings over Canon.

You are a true optimist, sony exmors advantage is the short analog signal path way to digitization= ADC in the end of every single raw at the sensor edge to hold down the read noise. Canon has nothing alike and do not have the equipment or expertise to do the same. Yes Sony has a lead to shrink electronics from their mobile camera sensor research and manufacturing.Time will tell what Canon can do or not, and they must do something about their sensors dynamic range when it is almost the same as in 2004

Your making wild, speculative assumptions about what Canon is or isn't capable of doing. It most likely has nothing to do with what Canon is capable of, and most likely to do with the fact that Sony owns the patents on the technology you are talking about: CP-ADC. I know exactly what CP-ADC is, how it works, and its advantages. Its only part of the equation, though. Sony has half a dozen other electronic noise mitigation patents that they also use in Exmor. The point here is that SONY OWNS THE PATENTS. That is their competitive advantage...it has nothing to do with fab capacity or capability, engineering expertise, etc. Canon is prevented from implementing technology that infringes on Sony's patents unless they come to some kind of legal or licensing agreement that allows them to do so. My guess is that Sony is going to wring every last ounce of advantage they can out of their patents before they give Canon the rights to use the technology in their own sensors. The two are epic rivals.

Canon has little option but to solve their problems in ways that are different enough from Sony's approach so they avoid infringing on Sony's patents. I am not sure what kind of leeway Canon may have in terms of innovating integrated electronics to mitigate noise. They already have their own form of CDS (Correlated Double Sampling), and they have their own patents on it. Sony also has patents on a form of CDS. Apparently the two approaches are different enough that both companies can hold patents for their specific way of implementing circuitry to solve that particular problem (the problem of dark current noise.) Who knows what other patents Canon has up their sleeve, or what patents they may be developing that they could add to their sensor tech. The issue may simply be ongoing R&D and time to market. I do believe Sony caught Canon off guard, but Sony has been filing patents for a decade, and a lot of the technology in Exmor was patented before 2004. It could be a couple more years before Canon is able to fully develop, prove, and patent their own version of the same kind of technology. In the mean time, they are apparently exploring cheaper options that can be implemented more quickly...such as some way to cool their sensors to reduce dark current noise.

The other thing about Canon is they are a very careful, meticulous company. They bide their time while they innovate, and there have been several occasions in the past where they appeared to be losing out to Nikon, only to come out with something rather radical in response. This happened when they unveiled EOS and brought AF to the market in the 1980's. That took the world by storm, and was the turning point that made Canon the supreme camera brand. The lead they gained back then still holds to today. Canon was also the first to bring full-frame DSLR's to the market. I believe they were the first to surpass the 20mp mark with the 5D II, which itself was a market changing device in its time as it brought affordable DSLR video recording capability to the table. Canon is an innovative and competitive company. It's simply that at this moment in time, Sony and Nikon have the limelight as they have introduced their own disruptive technology to the market and its making waves. That's all a good thing. It's the kind of competition the market place needs. It's the fire that spurs heightened innovation. Canon isn't going anywhere. This isn't the beginning of their long demise. It's just the beginning of a new phase of growth and innovation in the digital camera market that will probably span years, if not decades.

Your missing my point. IF <-- key word here -- Canon can reduce their ISO 100 read noise to the minimums recently seen in their cameras (1.5e- worth in the 1D IV sensor), they then could achieve an improvement in total DR at ISO 100. Sony Exmor effectively normalized read noise across all ISO settings. DXO's measurements seem a little sloppy...I've seen measurements from other reviewers that have much more consistent results, so my guess is that the D800 has a consistent 2.7e- read noise at all ISO settings (effectively the minimum read noise at all ISO settings.) IF Canon CAN DO THE SAME THING....make their minimum read noise from the highest ISO the read noise for all ISO's, like Sony did with Exmor, then Canon would have lower read noise than a D800.

Yeah but they have not been able to since they have bad read noise at one of the two stages, at higher ISO they boost the shadow signal above the point where the one stage adds tons of garbage to the lowest end of the signal. I mean that's the whole trick isn't it? You could say the same about just about any of the sensors out there.

As someone said if you use ISO1600 to read shadows and ISO100 to read highlights you'd have good DR.

Nikon can do it now because of the Exmor ADC architecture. They hadn't been able to do it too much before Exmore, although their D4 does show that you can do better than Canon does even with a pure straight design if you have better fab process or something.

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As for your presumption that Canon is incapable of developing a new fab or producing complex sensors at 180nm, there is nothing to stop Canon from innovating.

The unfortunate thing is that some website claims they looked over Canon's books and see no sign of the sort of expenditure that hints that they have done this and one Canon employee says they just slashed R&D development.

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Thats what competition does in a free market...it spurs innovation. Right now all we have about Canon's next cameras is rumor and speculation, but usually those rumors contain nuggets of factual, if not 100% accurate, insight. Based on the current rumors, I speculate that Canon IS innovating, and developing ways to improve their sensor technology beyond the current limitations it experiences today.

I sure hope so. I'd almost think they'd have to be. But then again I was sure the 5D3 would show low ISO improvements too and again some websites say looking over the books they don't necessarily see positive signs, at least not in terms of new fab lines, but I have no idea how well the website really looked things over or if Canon has some other way. But you would think they'd have to wake up to it all at some point.

As for your presumption that Canon is incapable of developing a new fab or producing complex sensors at 180nm, there is nothing to stop Canon from innovating.

The unfortunate thing is that some website claims they looked over Canon's books and see no sign of the sort of expenditure that hints that they have done this and one Canon employee says they just slashed R&D development.

Well, I don't think its that simple. Which Canon books? They have a presence in countries all over the world. And which R&D budget? They've done research and development in multiple countries. Are they moving R&D out of China and into Japan? Are they moving more to the US? Or out of both the US and China? Or more into China? Following a multinational companies books isn't an easy thing to do. Who knows exactly what Canon is doing? Anyone who claims to know what they are going to do in the future is just speculating.

Thats what competition does in a free market...it spurs innovation. Right now all we have about Canon's next cameras is rumor and speculation, but usually those rumors contain nuggets of factual, if not 100% accurate, insight. Based on the current rumors, I speculate that Canon IS innovating, and developing ways to improve their sensor technology beyond the current limitations it experiences today.

I sure hope so. I'd almost think they'd have to be. But then again I was sure the 5D3 would show low ISO improvements too and again some websites say looking over the books they don't necessarily see positive signs, at least not in terms of new fab lines, but I have no idea how well the website really looked things over or if Canon has some other way. But you would think they'd have to wake up to it all at some point.

I'm rather skeptical about "some website" looking over Canon's books. As I said, not an easy task to figure out what a multinational company does with its money, what its funding, etc. It takes armies of accountants to manage that stuff.

If Canon really does slash their R&D budget and refuses to improve their fabs, that very well may hurt them in the long run. But its illogical to think, and for Canon to actually ignore, the threat of competition. I don't believe they intend to simply ignore Sony. However if Nikon can't keep up with the demand for their products, Canon may not really be experiencing enough competitive pressure to forge ahead at the speed their customers want them too, either. Sony doesn't sell that many of their own cameras. Nikon is popular, but they don't seem to have the capacity to produce that Canon does. Other brands all have popularity in their niche markets, but none of them are particularly as mainstream as Canon is in the DSLR world. It is entirely possible they don't yet feel enough of a competitive threat to invest the kind of R&D horsepower they need to reclaim the crowns they've lost.

To be honest, when you have a significant advantage...whatever that advantage is, even if its simply market share and momentum...its the nature of the free market to capitalize on that advantage as cheaply as possible. Can't say I particularly like that, I really want a nice high-res, low noise landscape camera...but its the nature of the beast.

Perhaps someone here can shed some light on the rumored 46 megapixel camera that was supposed to be announced at Photokina. Just got off their website and there was apparently no announcement of any kind that I could find of such a camera yet we still have the story here at the CR forum....did they not do any type of announcement at Photokina??? Just asking

Thanks, my mistake....just got em all mixed up!

It wasn't Photokina. It was a different show called PhotoPlus that is supposed to happen soon (sometime in October) in New York.

Well, I don't think its that simple. Which Canon books? They have a presence in countries all over the world. And which R&D budget? They've done research and development in multiple countries. Are they moving R&D out of China and into Japan? Are they moving more to the US? Or out of both the US and China? Or more into China? Following a multinational companies books isn't an easy thing to do. Who knows exactly what Canon is doing? Anyone who claims to know what they are going to do in the future is just speculating.

Hopefully you are correct. One was some Swedish website or group and I don't know whether they knew how or were able to dig deep enough or not. They said they didn't see evidence of building any expensive new sensor lines. But who knows.

The R&D slash was Canon person but not from DSLR group (although I believe referring to that group). But who knows.

Hopefully they are wrong or it won't matter.

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I'm rather skeptical about "some website" looking over Canon's books. As I said, not an easy task to figure out what a multinational company does with its money, what its funding, etc. It takes armies of accountants to manage that stuff.

Hopefully and possibly so.

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If Canon really does slash their R&D budget and refuses to improve their fabs, that very well may hurt them in the long run. But its illogical to think, and for Canon to actually ignore, the threat of competition. I don't believe they intend to simply ignore Sony.

Hope so.

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To be honest, when you have a significant advantage...whatever that advantage is, even if its simply market share and momentum...its the nature of the free market to capitalize on that advantage as cheaply as possible. Can't say I particularly like that, I really want a nice high-res, low noise landscape camera...but its the nature of the beast.

True, although such companies usually stumble more in the long run than the ones that keep charging, but it is a very common occurrence for companies to end up acting like that. For some you can sort of understand the fear about pushing forward and risking this and that for cameras it seems a lot more stable so it seems a bit less understandable but it had definitely happens all the same.

Something else to keep in mind that Canon does a hell of a lot more than just DSLR's. They have dozens?, many dozens? (hundreds?), of research groups researching technolgoies for a variety of fields. A lot of it is sensor and lens related for other industries than DSLR, some of it is printer related, there is obviously a lot of optics research, etc. R&D budget slashing in general could affect any one of a number of areas at Canon that has nothing to do with their DSLR camera initiatives.

@Mikael: You stated, more than once, that Canon doesn't have the technology to generate large sensors with small transistors. I beg to differ. They developed a 120mp APS-C sensor with a high readout rate a couple of years ago. I found a page describing it: http://www.canon.com/technology/approach/special/cmos.html.

Their CMOS technology, which is capable of producing larger sized sensors (at least up to APS-H size, but if they can do APS-H size they can do FF size) with pixel sizes as small as 2.2 microns. Their 120mp APS-H sensor sported some kind of hyper-parallel sensor readout and processing to support the 9.5 FPS readout rate. That indicates some kind of column-parallel or maybe row-parallel read and ADC strategy, as the reason Sony designed CP-ADC originally was not so much for the IQ improvement as it was for the readout rate improvement (although in Sony's case they were aiming for 60fps readout for mirrorless cameras.)

I garner two things from Canon's prototypical 120mp APS-C sensor. One, they are most certainly capable of fabricating large sensors with very small transistors (the pixel size is 2.2 microns, so transistor size has to be incredibly small to pack enough red and amplifier circuitry into each pixel). Two, they already seem to have technology that allows very fast hyper-parallel readout of an incredibly pixel-dense sensor. Three, their parallel readout seems to process pixels as well as simply read them, indicating some kind of on-die ADC.

Something else to keep in mind that Canon does a hell of a lot more than just DSLR's. They have dozens?, many dozens? (hundreds?), of research groups researching technolgoies for a variety of fields. A lot of it is sensor and lens related for other industries than DSLR, some of it is printer related, there is obviously a lot of optics research, etc. R&D budget slashing in general could affect any one of a number of areas at Canon that has nothing to do with their DSLR camera initiatives.

@Mikael: You stated, more than once, that Canon doesn't have the technology to generate large sensors with small transistors. I beg to differ. They developed a 120mp APS-C sensor with a high readout rate a couple of years ago. I found a page describing it: http://www.canon.com/technology/approach/special/cmos.html.

Their CMOS technology, which is capable of producing larger sized sensors (at least up to APS-H size, but if they can do APS-H size they can do FF size) with pixel sizes as small as 2.2 microns. Their 120mp APS-H sensor sported some kind of hyper-parallel sensor readout and processing to support the 9.5 FPS readout rate. That indicates some kind of column-parallel or maybe row-parallel read and ADC strategy, as the reason Sony designed CP-ADC originally was not so much for the IQ improvement as it was for the readout rate improvement (although in Sony's case they were aiming for 60fps readout for mirrorless cameras.)

I garner two things from Canon's prototypical 120mp APS-C sensor. One, they are most certainly capable of fabricating large sensors with very small transistors (the pixel size is 2.2 microns, so transistor size has to be incredibly small to pack enough red and amplifier circuitry into each pixel). Two, they already seem to have technology that allows very fast hyper-parallel readout of an incredibly pixel-dense sensor. Three, their parallel readout seems to process pixels as well as simply read them, indicating some kind of on-die ADC.

my good you are a really Canon fan boy, do you listen to others or is it only to your own voice, give me one proof of investments from Canon regarding new sensors lines , who are you, and please keep your messages short and not a lot of chatter

Well, I find it ironic that the moment I provide a hard link with some actual evidence of relatively recent innovation, you resort to a personal attack. To be blunt, I don't mind so much...that's a sign of weakness in your argument.

Let me flip your request around. Give me proof they Canon is not continuing to innovate. Give me proof that Canon actually has indeed cut funding to their DSLR-related R&D and not to some other research group for an unrelated or tangentially related field that's proven unproductive or nonprofitable. You throw out a lot of anecdotes, but you don't really back much of it up. The couple times you did actually included an image to back up a claim, everyone on this forum could see that it was an underexposed shot produced for a biased comparison by the most chaotic photography forums on the net: DPReview.

Let's dispense with the anecdotes and sketchy evidence, and start pointing to some hard facts. I've tried. Your turn.

Regarding 120 mp sensor, that is a pro type, have you seen that in a camera, Sony could do a 500Mpixel if they want with theres mobile tech and a 24x36mm surface .Focus now if you have any knowledge of the subject, dont take it as a personal attack, take it as you do not know what you are talking about, and I am not used to the drivel you are writing, meet me on facts

What facts? You haven't supplied any facts. Only your personal opinions and speculation. Stating that "Sony could do a 500Mpixel if they want with theres mobile tech and a 24x36mm surface". Well, for one, your grammar and spelling could use a little, well LOT, of work. But second...that statement is 100% speculation. You can't spew pure speculation like that then a moment later turn around and tell me to "meet you on the facts." That's about as hypocritical as it gets.

The simple fact is, Canon has demonstrated an actual 120mp APS-H sized sensor with a 9.5fps readout rate. Sure, its a prototype, but its real. Canon states in their own information about it that it has broad on-die parallel readout and pixel processing. Those are facts. I speculate that Canon has something similar to Sony's CP-ADC based on that prototype sensor. What it is exactly and specifically how it works I can't say, as I have yet to find a patent on the technology in any publicly searchable repository. But the fact is, Canon does have on-die hyper-parallel (my term, since I don't know of a better one to describe something like row- or column- parallel logic in a sensor die) readout and pixel processing...something they innovated, and fairly recently (a lot more recently than 2004, which you assert is the last time Canon innovated anything...another anecdote.)

And Jrista, if you are used to that people are listen to you (You have written many posts here on this forum) I am not impressed of your logic, and please keep your messages short and concise. I take it again, Simply, there are no evidence that Canon have invest any money in a new sensor linje, this is open figures and seen in business stories for shareholders.There are also companies that make money on communicating what competitors are doing or not. A new sensor line cost about 1 billion US dollars or more, a heavy investment which will also be distributed to general public

Honestly, I could care less if you think my logic is flawed because my posts are not short.

I may have written a lot of posts on this forum, but I've written about 1/5th that or less compared to many members. I have about 700 posts. I guess that gives me a little bit of reputation, but not a ton. I don't expect anyone to listen to me at all. I'm a debater...people generally don't like debaters, so I rarely expect any positive return from my posts. There are members here who have thousands posts here, such as LTRLI and Neuro. A guy like Neuro has the kind of reputation that makes people listen and respect his opinion. I come and go, I chat and debate when I'm here, and then I'll be gone for weeks as I'm out and about camera in-hand photographing. I'm not terribly concerned with my reputation, I guess. I have made about 10,000 photos since the last week of August, so I have a good solid couple of weeks of post-processing, tagging, organizing, and printing to do for the keepers, which is why I'm here. I've been spending a lot of time in front of my computer browsing forums while I wait for a print to complete.

You, on the other hand, have what...50 posts? You barge in, hands chock full of personal attacks and gobs of anecdotal quips that you keep claiming are accurate, posts packed with some of the worst spelling and grammar I've seen in recent memory, but without anything to really back any of it up. We've both swapped anecdotes, and that will obviously get us nowhere, so I've requested that we both start backing up our claims with third-party evidence. I've tried...I've started supplying links to external resources that back up my claims. Yet you refuse to reciprocate.

All things being equal, you can feel free to keep doing what your doing. I don't think your grammar & spelling, your personal attacks at me, your persistent use of bold text, or your anecdotes are doing you or your arguments or yourself any good. For the moment, I'm done swapping anecdotes. I'm done even replying until you start backing up your own claims with hard evidence...press releases, financial reports, objective studies, whatever it may be. Otherwise we are just dancing around each other to no good end, and since you come off as a troll, I'm done feeding. (Hell, I probably should have stopped feeding you a long time ago.)

Hopefully you are correct. One was some Swedish website or group and I don't know whether they knew how or were able to dig deep enough or not. They said they didn't see evidence of building any expensive new sensor lines. But who knows.I know the group and one person is one of the best regarding sensors tech

Simply, there are no evidence that Canon have invest any money in a new sensor linje, this is open figures and seen in business stories for shareholders.There are also companies that make money on communicating what competitors are doing or not. A new sensor line cost about 1 billion US dollars or more, a heavy investment which will also be distributed to general public

Hopefully you are correct. One was some Swedish website or group and I don't know whether they knew how or were able to dig deep enough or not. They said they didn't see evidence of building any expensive new sensor lines. But who knows.I know the group and one person is one of the best regarding sensors tech

Simply, there are no evidence that Canon have invest any money in a new sensor linje, this is open figures and seen in business stories for shareholders.There are also companies that make money on communicating what competitors are doing or not. A new sensor line cost about 1 billion US dollars or more, a heavy investment which will also be distributed to general public

Well that is unfortunate.

I don't believe a new sensor line costs a billion in US$$. That is roughly the cost of a new semiconductor fabrication facility, and generally thats the kind of cost for one of Intel's incredibly advanced, cutting edge CPU fabrication facilities when they move from one die size to another. For one, if the design and development of a new sensor line doesn't necessarily require a new fab. If Canon has already produced a 120mp APS-H sensor with 2.2 micron pixels and some advanced parallel readout & processing circuitry with their existing fabs, it seems doubtful they would actually need to drop a billion or so a new one. As for R&D to design a new sensor, thats probably a cost of millions....but a far cry from a billion unless Canon has some seriously ground-breaking, game-changing technology up their sleeve. I doubt they have something that impactful (although one can hope...competition IS good for the consumer!), and they certainly have the sales and market share to invest a few tens to hundreds of millions in the development of new sensor technology (they still are the largest digital camera company in the world.)

It's highly doubtful Nikon and Sony spent a billion dollars designing Exmor. Just think about that for a moment...have either of them even made a billion dollars off the sales of the cameras that actually use Exmor sensors? (I mean, if we assume that Nikon actually made the full $3000 off each D800 they sold, they would have to sell over 333 million of them to make a billion dollars. At actual cost, they would probably have to sell over 500 million!) Thats an unholy lot of money to spend on "R&D". The development of a fab, in this case Sony's fab, is an entirely different story. Sony can use a single fab to produce a bazillion sensors a year in half a bazilion sizes and shapes for another half a bazillion purposes, for use in a zillion different industries and devices. Sony's (or for that matter Canon's) investment of a billion dollars in a semiconductor fab turns around and makes them many billions more. But that's a fab...not a new sensor design. And Mikael is purely speculating when he claims that Canon has to build a new fab to build better sensors (a statement I'm still waiting on some hard evidence for, and for which I believe there is evidence against in the existence of their 120mp APS-H sensor.)

Here is another little fact. Found this while digging through news for Canon's stock (spurred on by one of the other threads here on CR). Seems Canon has ranked third in overall patents filed in the US last year. That means Canon filed a HELL OF A LOT OF PATENTS!!

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Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions. With approximately $45.6 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents registered in 2011* and is one of Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies in 2012.

I believe the idea that Canon is not an innovative company with the horsepower to compete is a load of troll crap. As I've been saying, there is nothing to prevent Canon from stepping up their game and ultimately giving Nikon a run for their money. And the notion that they couldn't drop a few billion on a new semiconductor fab if they wanted to...another load of troll feces...they have a$45 billion dollar global revenue. A billion dollars is barely more than pocket change.

Additionally, another strong mark for Canon that Nikon just doesn't hold a stick to is their customer support, which apparently has been award winning for nine years:

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In 2012, for the ninth consecutive year, Canon U.S.A. has received the PCMag.com Readers' Choice Award for Service and Reliability.